'Yes, Doctor,' Pethel said, walking toward him. 'What can I do for you today ?' As if he didn't know. Trying to fight off Myra as well as keep his mistress, Cally Vale, Dr Sands had enough problems; he really needed the use of his Jiffi-scuttler. Unlike other customers it was not going to be possible to put this man off.
Plucking by reflex at his great handlebar mustache, presidential candidate Jim Briskin said tentatively, 'We're in a rut, Sal. I ought to fire you. You're trying to make me out the epitome of the Cols and yet you know I've spent twenty years playing up to the white power structure.
Frankly, I think we'd have better luck trying to get the white vote, not the dark. I'm used to them;
I can appeal to them.'
'You're wrong,' his campaign manager, Salisbury Heim, said. 'Your appeal - listen and understand this, Jim - is to the dark kid and his wife scared to death their only prospect is winding up bibs in some gov warehouse. "Bottled in bond," as they say. In you these people see...'
'But I feel guilty.'
'Why ?' Sal Heim demanded.
'Because I'm a fake. I can't close the Dept of SPW warehouses; you know that. You got me to promise, and ever since I've been sweating my life away trying to conceive how it could be done.
And there isn't any way.' He examined his wristwatch; one quarter-hour remained before he had to give his speech. 'Have you read the speech Phil Danville wrote for me ?' He reached into his disorganized, lumpy coat-pouch.
'Danville!' Heim's face convulsed. 'I thought you got rid of him; give me that.' He grabbed the folded sheets and began going over them. 'Danville is a nut. Look.' He waved the first sheet in
Jim Briskin's face. 'According to him, you're going to ban traffic from the U.S. to Thisbe's satellite.
That's insane! If the Golden Door is closed, the birth rate will jump back up again where it was -
what then ? How does Danville manage to counter that ?'
After a pause Briskin said, 'The Golden Door is immoral.'
Spluttering, Heim said, 'Sure. And animals should wear pants.'
'There's just got to be a better solution than that satellite.'
Heim lapsed into silence as he read further into title speech. 'And he has you advocate this outmoded, thoroughly discredited planet-wetting technique of Bruno Mini.' He tossed the papers into Jim Briskin's lap. 'So what do you wind up with ? You back a planetary colonization scheme tried twenty years ago and abandoned; you advocate closing the Golden Door satellite - you'll be popular, Jim, after tonight. But popular with whom, though ? Just answer me; who is this aimed at ?’ He waited.
There was silence.
'You know what I think ?' Heim said presently. 'I think this is your elaborate way of giving up.
Of saying to hell with the whole thing. It's how you shed responsibility; I saw you start to do the same thing at the convention in that crazy doomsday speech you gave, that morbid curiosity which still has everyone baffled. But fortunately you'd already been nominated. It was too late for the convention to repudiate you.'
Briskin said, 'I expressed my real convictions in that speech.'
'What, that civilization is now doomed because of this overpopulation biz ? Some convictions for the first Col President to have.' Heim got to his feet and walked to the window; he stood looking out at downtown Philadelphia, at tide jet-copters landing, the runnels of autocars and ramps of footers coming and going, into and out of every high-rise building in sight. 'I once in a while think,' Heim said in a low voice, 'that you feel it's doomed because it's nominated a Negro and may elect him; it's a way of putting yourself down.'
'No,' Briskin said, with calm; his long face remained unruffled.
'I'll tell you what to say in your speech for tonight,' Heim said, his back to Briskin. 'First, you once more describe your relationship with Frank Woodbine, because people go for space explorers; Woodbine is a hero, much more so than you or what's-his-name. You know; the man you're running against. The SRCD incumbent.'
'William Schwarz.'
Heim nodded exaggeratedly. 'Yes, you're right. Then after you gas about Woodbine - and we show a few shots of you and him standing together on various planets - then you make a joke about Dr Sands.'
'No,' Briskin said.
'Why not ? Is Sands a sacred cow ? You ain't touch him ?'
Jim Briskin said slowly, painstakingly, 'Because Sands is a great doctor and shouldn't be ridiculed in the media the way he is right now.'
'He saved your brother's life. By finding him a wet new liver just in the nick of time. Or he saved your mother just when...'
'Sands has preserved hundreds, thousands, of people. Including plenty of Cols. Whether they were able to pay or not.' Briskin was silent a moment and then he added, 'Also I met his wife
Myra and I didn't like her. Years ago I went to her; I had made a girl preg and we wanted abort advice.'
'Good!' Heim said violently. 'We can use that. You made a girl pregnant - that, when Nonovulid is free for the asking; that shows you're a provident type, Jim.' He tapped his forehead. 'You think ahead.'
'I now have five minutes,' Briskin said woodenly. He gathered up the pages of Phil Danville's speech and returned them to his inside coat pouch; he still wore a formal dark suit even in hot weather. That, and a flaming red wig, had been his trademark back in the days when he had telecast as a TV newsclown.
'Give that speech,' Heim said, 'and you're politically dead. And if you're...' He broke off. The door to the room had opened and his wife Patricia stood there.
'Sorry to bother you,' Pat said. 'But everyone out here can hear you yelling.' Heim caught a glimpse, then, of the big outside room full of teen-age Briskinettes, uniformed young volunteers who had come from all over the country to help elect the Republican Liberal candidate.
'Sorry,' Heim murmured.
Pat entered the room and shut the door after her. 'I think Jim’s right, Sal.' Small, gracefully-built
- she had once been a dancer - Pat lithely seated herself and lit a cigar. 'The more naive Jim appears, the better.' She blew gray smoke from between her luminous, pale lifts. 'He still has a lingering reputation for being cynical. Whereas he should be another Wendell Wilkie.'
'Wilkie lost,' Heim pointed out.
'And Jim may lose,' Pat said; she tossed her head, brushing back her long hair from her eyes. 'But if he does, he can run again and win next time. The important thing is for him to appear sensitive and innocent, a sweet person who takes the world's suffering on his own shoulders because he's made that way. He can't help it; he has to suffer. You see ?'
'Amateurs,' Heim said, and groaned.
The TV cameras stood inert, as the seconds passed, but they were ready to begin; the time for the speech lay just ahead as Jim Briskin sat at the small desk which he employed when addressing the people. Before him, near at hand, rested Phil Danville's speech. And he sat meditating as the
TV technicians prepared for the recording.
The speech would be beamed to the Republican-Liberal Party's satellite relay station and from it telecast repeatedly until saturation point had been achieved. States Rights Conservative
Democrat attempts to jam it would probably fail, because of the enormous signal-strength of the
R-L satellite. The message would get through despite Tompkins Act, which permitted jamming of political material. And, simultaneously, Schwarz' speech would be jammed in return; it was scheduled for release at the same time.
Across from him sat Patricia Heim, lost in a cloud of nervous introspection. And, in the control room, he caught a glimpse of Sal, busy with the TV engineers, making certain that the image recorded would be flattering.